Every member of the group took their position and began their trek through undead-infested streets. The team started off slowly, but as the number of undead dwindled, the pace quickly ramped up.
"We'll find a temple in no time," Alvira said as she hacked down yet another zombie.
"It will start slowing down soon, we'll have to deal with stronger undead once we get close enough to one," Merlin explained.
The group continued to traverse the abandoned city until they suddenly ran into a larger group of undead.
"That's... There's a lot of them there..." Alvira muttered, "Do we try to find our way around them?"
"That large of a group usually means that there's a point of interest nearby, like the market we passed when we first got here," Merlin said.
"So we're close to the temple?" Snowbunny asked, "Then I suppose we take them."
"Everyone get ready for a fight, Nora, watch our flank," Merlin commanded as he unsheathed his daggers.
A small handful of undead seemed to notice the group from quite a distance away and began shambling towards them.
"My turn!" Tiny roared as he charged towards the undead stragglers, he seemed to have gotten rather bored being stuck in the backline for the entire expedition.
With a wide swing of his war hammer, two undead were thrown through the door of the closest house, wood splinters scattered as the door was violently ripped from its hinges.
Merlin and Snowbunny ran after him, quickly dealing with the undead that remained.
"Don't get killed," Merlin shouted to his party as he sprinted towards the crowd of undead. With their weapons drawn, the rest of the group followed him into battle.
The sounds of weapons slicing through flesh rung out within the city, and although the undead horde was losing combatants at a rapid pace, Merlin's side had taken its fair share of damage too.
Merlin sliced through yet another undead when he received a notification indicating that one of his quests had been completed, he glanced at it quickly before leaping back into the fight.
「You have completed the quest, "Push back the horde.", visit the temple's outpost to receive your rewards.」
"God, we really need to get a healer," Zankoku complained as he clutched his right arm, an arm that received a large scratch wound from a lucky zombie.
"How about you just don't get hit," Alvira mocked him as she slid under Tiny's wide swing.
Tiny roared with excitement as he swung his war hammer, each swing took the heads off of any undead within his reach, as though he were a farmer reaping grain.
"We should have started with this, instead of all that sneaking arou--" Tiny's words were cut short as he turned a corner. The rest of the party could only watch as the war hammer-wielding giant was suddenly thrown back towards them.
Snowbunny narrowly avoided Tiny as he skid past them, Alvira was not as fortunate. The two flew back several more metres until they both crashed into a wall.
"What the hell?" Alvira swore as she slapped the back of Tiny's head, "That hurt."
Tiny only let out a groan as he stood back up, using his war hammer as a walking stick for the first few steps.
Merlin's attention was quickly brought back to where Tiny had been thrown from, as a large rotting creature emerged from behind the wall.
"An ogre... An undead ogre..." Merlin muttered as he stared at the hideous creature.
The zombified ogre let out a disturbing roar as it brandished the crude mace in its hands, preparing itself for another swing.
"Woah there big fella," Merlin taunted as he barely ducked under a wide swing of the monster's mace. His hair whipped around frantically due to the wind pressure caused by the swing, signalling to Merlin that getting hit would be more than just unpleasant.
"Let's back out, we need to bait this guy into a tight alley so he can't swi--" Merlin's commands were cut off as he quickly rolled out of a downward swing from the mace. The blow was so violent that it sent dust and specks of stone into the air, and Merlin could feel the vibrations from the ground running up his legs. "...So he can't swing that bloody mace around so freely."
His companions quickly turned towards the direction they had come from and began clearing the way out of any monsters wandering the streets behind them. Merlin slowly followed while avoiding the undead ogre's deadly blows, alongside any other undead that thought it wise to follow, even though they were currently the only things getting demolished by the ogre's berserk swings.
"Merlin, what about this alley?" Snowbunny yelled out, causing Merlin's gaze to shift towards her.
"Too wide, find something thinner," Merlin shouted out, "Go a little further down the street, I remember an alley this guy wouldn't be able to enter without squeezing."
After avoiding several of the undead ogre's attacks, Merlin started getting into the rhythm of each swing, to the point he was confident with making a show of it.
The extra leeway granted to him had given him the opportunity to glance at his stream's chat window, where he noticed an influx of new commenters.
From just a general observation of his chat, it seemed as though the streamers had finally logged in and started up their streams. But not many of the viewers found interest in a group getting destroyed by slimes or exploring the beginner town, so they decided to check out other streams to see if anyone was doing anything interesting yet, where they found Merlin skillfully avoiding a large grotesque behemoth of a beast.
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[User]... : Where did you learn to move like that?
[User]... : Where are you? This doesn't look like the area the other streams started in.
[User]... : Is this the next town over from the starting zone?
[User]... : Why would the town over be infested with zombies? Does that make sense? Fighting slimes to fighting giant zombies?
[User]... : Shouldn't it be slimes and then kobolds?
[User]... : No, slimes and then goblins, this is a western RPG, right?
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